Bikechatter has had a facelift to improve usability as the old template was problematic, in order to simplify things we have changed the template engine entirely and although the layout and styling are very similar to the old site, everything is brand spanking new. We may have to tweak things in these early days so please be aware that people are working on the site - no hard hat required though, thankfully.

Following the site redevelopment we have looked into a number of areas on the site that were either confusing to use, created excessive issues or in this case a combination of both and found that the social profile and networking area was not really being utilised and added a number of large files that were not working properly. As a result we have taken this area offline for now and may look to do this permenantly, users have still got a full forum and the profile associated.

Over the years the way Bikechatter scores products has adapted, first it was 5 stars, then we added half points and then finally to allow for a finer tuned scoring system we implemented a 10 star rating system in 2011. When scoring was based on 5 stars we naturally scored higher quality items at 4 stars and above so this has translated in to a much higher overall average score on the site for everything.

Going foreward we felt that we needed  to distinguish average products from better quality items and have scores to reflect this. In order to do this we are putting in place a score reduction, weighted on each item criteria based on what is important for each category, for sport tyres as an example we would consider dry grip more important than longevity and thus weight the overall scoring to match this.

For a few days now the login seems to have been denying member logins, we are pleased to announce that as of midnight on the 11th March this issue has been resolved and full access is available once again for all areas of the site.

We are just compiling the last of the 2011 product reviews on the site, after which time we will be announcing the winners of our coveted product awards for the finest products we got a chance to test during 2011. Keep a sharp eye out for out Product of the Year and Innovation of the Year, we let you know which products are best in their class to help you make an informed choice when looking for new kit.